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Metro Vancouver Alliance is a broad based alliance of community groups, labour, faith and educational institutions working together for the common good.

Broad-based community organizations operate on the principle of ‘power before program’. In other words, they build strong relationships amongst diverse groups in the community. Those groups then come together to listen to their members’ concerns and to agree on issues that can be worked on together. This ensures that the alliances are sustainable over the long term and that members work on those issues that concretely matter most to them. Members develop leadership skills and learn “the art of politics” through active engagement and participation.

MVA is based on a model of community organizing pioneered by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Founded by Saul Alinsky in the 1930’s, IAF has over 60 active community alliances across the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia.

Metro Vancouver Alliance (MVA) was founded in 2009. Over 30 organizations are now in membership and the alliance continues to grow.

MVA builds leaders. Our main goal is to build leaders within our institutions who will become leaders in the community. We listen to the concerns and feelings of our diverse membership and then discern common ground from all of the unique voices. Before MVA will take on an issue it must be relevant to a broad section of our membership, encourage the development of new leaders, have specific and winnable actions, and improve the community.

MVA organizes through relationships.

We build relationships both within and outside of our institutions to learn where people’s passions lie, build power, and remain accountable. Personal face to face conversations and meetings are the most effective way to connect with our neighbours and fellow citizens and discover their interests, pressures, and hopes.

What we’ve accomplished.

MVA has built an alliance of constituency based organizations that support our objectives and methodology. Hundreds of people have taken part in MVA leadership institutes and innovative projects. MVA recently held a summit of senior community leaders. On May 27th over 120 people from 38 institutions came together to kick off MVA’s listening campaign. Over the summer, our member institutions will shape the action agenda that will be taken forward when MVA launches in early 2014.

Last night 70 people gathered to share news about the listening campaigns going on in their organizations. MVA member organizations have been meeting over the past few months in one-to-one meetings and small groups, to discuss the issues that matter most to them. These issues will form the core of the public agenda MVA will take forward when in launches on March 19, 2014.

Members of the board of the DNC, along with two members of BCS met today with the City of Vancouver to address long standing issues of process and inclusion in the DTES LAPP. Satisfactory outcomes are hoped for on both sides.

Time for an Inner City DTES community update on key projects several of us are working on, from SFU’s-100 communities dialogue on economic development, the DNC Street Market, ALIVE’s Salish Sea Civilization and the Inner City Economic Strategy.